


sun through open windows

by acezukos (purplefennels7)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M, Morning Routines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28153575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/acezukos
Summary: It’s a routine now, an awkward little dance that they only seem to undertake after sufficient caffeination, but Mako wouldn’t trade it for all the money in the world.//Mako, Wu, and mornings.
Relationships: Mako/Prince Wu (Avatar)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 117
Collections: MMEU Winter Solstice Exchange 2020





	sun through open windows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vaenire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaenire/gifts).



> happy solstice vae! you are lovely and ily i hope you enjoy this bit of fluff as much as i enjoyed writing it <33
> 
> love to my beta. title from "joy" by sleeping at last.

Mako wakes to a dimly lit room, Wu curled close around him and making little snuffling noises in his sleep. A glance at the window tells him that the sun is rising. 

Wu’s arms tighten around his waist as he makes to get out of bed, and he groans and turns his head to look balefully at him.

“Do we really have to do this every morning?” he grumbles, and is met with Wu kicking him, very gently.

“Yes, Mako,” Wu whines, voice still heavy with sleep. “‘Cause you insist on getting up this early every morning. Just stay here, or are my sheets not good enough for you?”

“Of course that’s what you’d ask. Wu, I’m a firebender. Rise with the sun isn’t just a saying, it’s literally how our bodies work. Will you let me go?” 

Predictably enough, he does not get let go. After a few more tugs he gives up and flops back to lie on his back, loosely tracing the curve of Wu’s body around him. He could break Wu’s hold if he really wanted to - teaching him to fight is going about as well as he’d expected, which is to say, they make an attempt every day. Wu probably knows that, too, but has the grace not to mention it.

“Mako, big guy, learn how to relax,” Wu says solemnly, tucking his warm nose against the back of Mako’s neck. It’s tempting, honestly, to nudge back into Wu’s arms and go back to sleep for a while. But no matter how much he tells him to ‘relax, Mako,’ he’s just never been able to extend that to sleeping in. Waking up late feels decadent, like the sickening feeling of a too-rich piece of cake and the few times it’s happened it throws Mako’s whole day into shambles. The impression of having wasted the morning isn’t quite worth the indulgence.

Wu sighs, nosing into his side as Mako sits up. 

“One day. One day, I’ll get you to stay here til a reasonable human hour,” he grouses, and Mako kisses him on the forehead. 

“Who’s gonna make breakfast for you if I’m not up, hm?” His last, best trick, and it hasn’t failed him yet.

“I can still pay someone to do that, you know.” Mako rolls his eyes, finally extricating himself with no small amount of regret. 

“And have you complain about how my cooking is better all the time? Absolutely not.” With that parting comment he slips out of bed, tossing a dressing gown that he’s pretty sure, by the quality of the fabric, used to belong to Wu over his shoulders and rubbing absently at his scarred arm. When he pauses at the door Wu is already asleep again, unruly hair flopping over his forehead and shaving years from his face. 

Mako stands and watches for a long minute, contentment welling like warm sunlight in his chest. He never thought he’d get to have something like this. With Wu, certainly; if someone had told him years ago that he’d be in a long-term relationship with the ex-king of the Earth Kingdom, he would’ve laughed them out of the room. He’d hated him back then, and that’s only a little bit of an exaggeration. 

But, he never expected to have anything like this at all. He’d resolved himself, far too early perhaps, to live and die for Bolin and nothing else. Anything else was a distraction at best, a threat at worst. This, this flat, with someone who loves him, with Bolin safe and happy, with a job he loves even though he’s convinced Beifong _still_ has him on lighter duty even now, is a gift. One that some days, he still isn’t sure if he deserves.

He shakes himself suddenly, dispelling the strange pall of melancholy and moving to start the coffeemaker. It’s still hard sometimes, to remember that he doesn’t have to be looking over his shoulder every minute of every day, but he’s working on it. 

The skillet makes a horrendous clattering as he pulls it out of the cabinet, and he winces, mouthing a silent apology in the direction of the bedroom as he starts cracking eggs into a bowl. It happens every morning, but somehow he’s still surprised when Wu pads into the kitchen, wrapped up in his own ridiculous green silk dressing gown and rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Smells good,” he says, and Mako slides a cup of coffee - black, no sugar - across the counter.

“‘S just eggs,” he replies, batting Wu’s hand away as he tries to sneak a bite of the scrambled eggs he’s plating. “What are you doing? You don’t even like scrambled.”

“Yeah, but I’m hungry,” Wu says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Mako glares down at the pan and tries not to sigh too loudly. “Lighten up, tough guy. You’re making more, aren’t you?”

Mako doesn’t bother to sigh quietly this time.

“I really am gonna mess up your fancy omelette one of these days,” he says, pouring the beaten egg into the pan and swishing it around. Wu just laughs, and Mako hears footsteps just before there’s silk whispering against his skin and Wu is pressing a kiss to his shoulder blade.

“I’ll still eat it,” he tells him, and Mako knows they’re both thinking of the mornings when Mako’s arm is flaring up but he insists on making breakfast anyway. It turns out burnt half the time, and half of it usually ends up outside the pan, but to give Wu credit, he always chokes down whatever Mako manages to salvage, and even helps with the dishes. 

“What do you need for this one?” Wu asks, fingers curling around Mako’s wrist as he reaches for the spice cabinet. “Wait, don’t tell me.”

His face is hidden mostly in Mako’s shoulder still, but he definitely has his thinking face on, the one where he scrunches his nose up and if he’s wearing his glasses, tips them down to rest on the tip of his nose. If he doesn’t have them on, he does the motion anyway. If held at knifepoint, or when Wu makes those stupid pleading eyes that he’s discovered recently, Mako might admit that it’s cute.

“Tomatoes, right. And cheese, which is why you don’t eat ‘em.” 

Maybe Mako’s crusade to teach Wu to make his own dumb omelette is going better than he’d previously thought.

“I don’t eat them because scrambled is easier,” he corrects. “But yes, you’ve got it. Can I get to the spices now?”

“Oh! Yeah, oops.” Apparently, he’s forgotten that he’s still holding onto Mako’s hand. 

Mako focuses on shaking the pepper evenly over the egg to hide the small, fond smile that insists on curving his mouth, and has his efforts promptly thwarted when Wu hands him a bag of cheese and leans in to kiss the corner of his mouth. Against his will, he finds himself blushing, just like he always does when Wu bestows these little bits of affection on him. 

“C’mon, let me get to the grater,” he says, shooing him away from the counter. 

“What, no kiss?” Wu pouts. He looks sufficiently pathetic, standing there with a small tomato clutched in each hand, that Mako can’t help but acquiesce, catching his chin with the hand not holding the cheese bag to brush their mouths together.

Wu has a satisfied little smile on his face when he pulls away, and Mako watches for a while as he sets determinedly to slicing tomatoes. The rising sunlight streams in through the window on the opposite wall, illuminating Wu in profile and painting him in gold like he’s glowing. There’s a little crease between his eyebrows as he squints at the cutting board, and if he were someone else Mako would step in close and kiss it away. 

But he isn’t, still can’t shake off a lifetime of holding back his affection no matter how freely Wu gives his own. So, when Wu turns to transfer the tomatoes to the skillet, he settles for reaching out and smoothing a finger over his brows. Wu smiles at him, sudden like the dawn, and Mako smiles back. 

Wu makes another pot of coffee while Mako is finishing up the omelette, wrinkling his nose as he dumps sugar into one of the cups.

“I’ll never get how you drink this,” he announces as he sets the cup down at Mako’s usual place at the table. “Would you like some coffee with your milk, sir?”

“I can’t believe _you_ drink _that,”_ Mako retorts, gesturing expansively at the cup in Wu’s hand and nearly flinging egg off the spatula in the process. “It’s like you don’t have tastebuds.” 

“I’m not exactly drinking it for the flavour, you know.” There’s a clatter as he goes digging into the cabinets, and momentarily he appears at Mako’s elbow with a plate so that Mako doesn’t have to juggle one more thing. He nods gratefully and tips Wu’s omelette onto it, picking up his own and sinking into the pulled-out chair at the table. 

If someone had to guess which side of the table belongs to each of them, what with Wu’s omelette and black coffee and Mako’s scrambled eggs and ‘milk,’ Mako thinks they’d be hard-pressed to get it right. It’s a routine now, an awkward little dance that they only seem to undertake after sufficient caffeination, but Mako wouldn’t trade it for all the money in the world. 

Wu chatters on about something or the other as they eat, possibly related to philosophy, or maybe the mover of the week - Mako just lets the sound of his voice wash over him and isn’t even surprised at the way it grounds him. It’s like a constant reassurance that he has someone, that it isn’t just him and Bolin anymore. Wu is stability incarnate, Wu and Korra and Asami and even Beifong, even though he’d never say it to her face. They’re the markers of a life well-lived, the kind of future he’d thought to be out of reach.

“Wu,” he says suddenly, a little desperately maybe, cutting Wu off in the middle of a sentence about some long-dead, probably distantly-related Earth Kingdom royal. “You know I love you, right?” 

Wu gives him the look that means he knows Mako wasn’t listening, but a smile breaks through a second later, tinged with a hint of surprise.

“Of course I know,” he says, tugging his chair forwards until he’s firmly in Mako’s space, and Mako lets himself sag into his side, inexpressibly grateful that Wu is here. That he stays, that he tries to understand even when Mako can’t put his thoughts all the way into words. “Are you alright?”

Is he?

He looks at Wu, looks at their kitchen, the empty cups of coffee and the half-empty plates, Wu’s suit jacket draped carefully over the end of the couch and Mako’s uniform overcoat tossed next to it, and smiles.

“I am.”

Wu pulls him closer, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head.

“Good.” 

They sit there for long minutes, Mako’s cheek tucked against Wu’s chest. He can hear his heart beating, steady and slow, and finds himself matching his breaths to its tempo. 

Wu shifts suddenly, slipping his hands up Mako’s chest so he can look him in the eye. “Now,” he says, with mock seriousness clouding his voice, “eat your eggs.” And he shoves a bit of his omelette into Mako’s mouth.

“Wu,” Mako splutters, half-choking and half-laughing. “Wu, you know I can’t have cheese, come on.”

“It’s just a little bit, I know you’ll be fine. Eat your own cooking, it’s good,” Wu laughs.

“I - also cooked mine? You’re ridiculous,” Mako says, pushing down the grin threatening to break across your face.

“You love me,” Wu replies, and well, Mako can’t argue with that, can he. 

“I do, spirits help me.” It’s just like every other morning, this push and pull, like waves lapping against a beach, but every morning Wu looks at him like he’s a revelation and he doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of it. 

Wu leans in to kiss him then, and as he meets him in the middle he thinks to himself, no. He doesn’t think he’ll tire of this. Not as long as he lives. 

**Author's Note:**

> your honour, they're soft. comments and kudos warm my heart <3
> 
> playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2RzUdSocPEyedPOpp8EYhU?si=5bdJhwyCSe-uPmd-ZIf4Vg)


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